emagazine A Level English Literature Student Conference (London, Autumn 2026)
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Date - 10 Nov 2026 (UK)
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Availability -
Places available
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Price - £25 per student
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Location - Friends House, London
Programme and Speakers
10.25
Andrew McCallum welcomes you to the Conference
10.30-11.15
Professor Emma Smith: Shakespeare and historical context: what, when, and why?
Whatever Shakespeare play you’re studying, you’re probably encouraged to think about it in historical context. This lecture opens up some ways to do that, using a range of examples and providing contextual information. But it also questions the underlying assumptions of this approach to Shakespeare: that the works reflect their time. By comparing his plays with modern TV and film, we can develop a more nuanced sense of the relationship between art and its moment. We end by thinking about anachronism – often seen as an outlawed mode in Shakespeare criticism. But what might actually be gained from thinking about Shakespeare out of his own period, and how can we do that effectively?
11.15-12.00
Professor John Mullan: How people think in novels
Novels have a power unlike any other art form to take us into another person’s mind. Examining both first-person and third-person narrations, this talk will show how they do so. Ranging from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to fiction of the present day, we will see how novelists reveal to the reader what the other characters in their novels often do not understand – a person’s most private thoughts.
12.00-12.50: LUNCH
12.50-13.35
Sarah Crown in conversation with poet Malika Booker
13.35-14.00
BREAK
14.00-14.45
Novelist Elif Shafak in conversation with Tom Gatti, Culture Editor of The Observer
14.45–15.30
Novelist and poet Dean Atta
Getting to the Conference
Train
- The closest train stations are Euston, London St Pancras and Kings Cross.
Tube (underground)
- Tube stations within a 5 to 15-minute walk include: Euston, Euston Square, Kings Cross, Goodge Street, Russell Square, Tottenham Court Road and Warren Street. The closest tubes are Euston and Euston Square.
Bus
- Numbers 10, 18, 30, 73, 205 and 390 pass the door whilst 59, 68, 91, 168, and 253 stop nearby.
Travelling by Minibus or Car?
- Friends House is within a meter parking zone. Charges must be paid Monday to Friday 08:30 -18:30. Please note that Friends House is within the congestion charge zone. For details of how to pay here.
Coaches
- Coaches may stop outside Friends House to drop students off.
Parking
- There is no on-site parking available at Friends House. The local roads have metered parking bays and fall within TfL charging zones. TFL driving information is available on the TFL website. There are three disabled blue badge parking bays located in Endsleigh Gardens.Information about Camden Council parking is available on the Council's website.
Risk Assessment
We are unable to provide a risk assessment for your students, but are very happy to answer any questions you might have about the venue which would help you in completing your own risk assessment.
Arrangements on the Day
Registration
Registration will open at 9.30am and we ask you to be in your seats for 10am so we can begin promptly at 10.20am.
Entrance is via the Euston Road entrance to Friends House.
Teachers Accompanying Students
We expect all students to be accompanied by a teacher. There should be a minimum of 1 teacher per 20 students.
We request that teachers meet their students in advance, register as a group and sit with their groups of students. Teachers are responsible for ensuring that their own students maintain acceptable standards of behaviour in the auditorium and in the Friends House building.
Lunch and Refreshments
The cafe at Friends House is open from 8am.
You and your students will be responsible for providing your own lunches. There are sandwich shops in the area immediately behind Friends House and plenty of food outlets across the road at Euston Station.
There are spaces outside for students to eat their packed lunch but no indoor spaces.
Risk Assessment
We are unable to provide a risk assessment for your students, but are very happy to answer any questions you might have about the venue which would help you in completing your own risk assessment.
Andrew McCallum
Andrew McCallum is Director of the English and Media Centre. Prior to that he ran a PGCE course in secondary English, and previously he taught for 15 years in London schools, spending most of that time at Acland Burghley School in Camden. He holds a doctorate in education, is author of Creativity and Learning in Secondary English (Routledge) and writes regularly for NATE's Teaching English magazine. If asked to name the EMC publication he's most proud of having worked on, it would be a three-way contest between Iridescent Adolescent, Diverse Shorts and Write On.
Professor Emma Smith
Emma Smith is Professor of Shakespeare Studies at Hertford College Oxford. She is the author of This Is Shakespeare and numerous articles for emagazine.
Professor John Mullan
John Mullan is Lord Northcliffe Professor of Modern English Literature at University College London. His books include What Matters in Jane Austen? (2012) and, most recently, The Artful Dickens (2020). He is also a broadcaster and journalist, writing on contemporary fiction for the Guardian. He is the author of How Novels Work and in 2009 was one of the judges for the Man Booker Prize.
Sarah Crown
Sarah Crown is Director of Literature at the Arts Council England. She edited the Guardian's books website for many years, and regularly reviews fiction and poetry for the Guardian, the Telegraph and the TLS.
Elif Shafak
Elif Shafak is an award-winning British Turkish novelist, whose work has been translated into fifty-seven languages. The author of twenty books, fourteen of which are novels, she was awarded the Halldór Laxness Prize for her contribution to the art of storytelling. Shafak's previous novel, There are Rivers in the Sky, was the UK’s bestselling literary hardback novel of 2025, selling over 500,000 copies. Widely read in many countries around the world, her writing has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize, the Women’s Prize for Fiction, the RSL Ondaatje Prize, the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction, and Prix Femina Etranger, amongst others, and she was nominated for ‘Author of the Year’ at the British Book Awards. Elif Shafak was appointed President of the Royal Society of Literature in 2025. She was awarded the British Academy President’s medal for bravely tackling sensitive subjects and for her body of work which demonstrates an incredible intercultural range.
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Dean Atta
Dean Atta is a BAFTA award-winning screenwriter and Stonewall Book Award-winning author from London. Best known for his young adult novel in verse, The Black Flamingo, and the stop-motion animation, Two Black Boys in Paradise, his heartfelt storytelling draws on his Greek Cypriot and Jamaican heritage as well as his queer identity. Dean is a patron of LGBT+ History Month and Chair of the Poetry and Spoken Word Group of the Society of Authors. He has published three young adult novels in verse, two poetry collections, two picture books, and a memoir. His debut adult novel, Big Man, was published by Cipher Press in September 2026.
Malika Booker
Dr Malika Booker a British poet of Guyanese and Grenadian Parentage, and a senior lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University. She co-founded Malika’s Poetry Kitchen (A writers’ collective). Their Anthology – Two Young, Two Black, Too Different, Poems from Malika’s Poetry Kitchen celebrates MPK’s twenty-year anniversary. Her pamphlet Breadfruit received a Poetry Society recommendation, and her poetry collection Pepper Seed was shortlisted for the OCM Bocas prize and the Seamus Heaney Centre 2014 prize. She is published with Sharon Olds and Warsan Shire in The Penguin Modern Poet Series 3: Your Family: Your Body (2017).
A Cave Canem Fellow, Complete Works Fellow and inaugural Poet in Residence at The Royal Shakespeare Company, Malika was awarded the Cholmondeley Award (2019) for outstanding contribution to poetry and elected a Royal Society of Literature Fellow (2022). She is the first woman to win the Forward Prize for Best Single poem twice: The Little Miracles (2020) and Libation (2023).
Tom Gatti
Tom Gatti is literary editor of The Observer and former deputy editor of the New Statesman. He is editor of Long Players: Writers on the Albums that Shaped Them.
ON SALE 10AM TUESDAY 29TH SEPTEMBER. SEE BOOKING DETAILS FOR HOW TO BOOK.
Prices
- The fee is £25 per student, with one free teacher place as follows: 1-9 students = 1 free teacher place; 10-19 students = 2 free teacher places and so on.
- You will be automatically allocated the correct number of teacher places and will need to provide details for each teacher attending. (You can change the teachers attending, if necessary, when you tell us final numbers on xxxx.)
- For additional teachers, or teachers attending without students, for their own interest or CPD, the charge is £50 each.
Booking the conference – important information
- Before booking, please see our updated cancellation policy.
- We are unable to take provisional bookings or reserve places. Conference places will be allocated on a first come first served basis.
- To book this conference you must be signed into a UK Educator Admin (purchasing) or UK Trust/Academy – Head Office (purchasing). Trust/MAT head offices: please see 'Special information for Trusts' below.
- Bookings can only be made online. It is no longer possible to pay in full for conference places by debit or credit card via the website at the time of booking.
- Overseas schools and individuals interested in attending the conference, please email us.
How to book
- Sign in to a UK Educator Admin (purchasing) or UK Trust/Academy – Head Office (purchasing) account.
- Add the number of student places you need. Free teacher places will be allocated automatically. There is a limit of 60 places per organisation.
- Confirm you have read and agree to the updated terms & conditions.
- Add the names and contact details of the teachers attending – if you don't know these details yet, just copy/paste the details of the lead teacher.
- Checkout within 24 minutes. Otherwise the booking will expire and you will have to begin the process again.
- Click submit and then Go to basket.
- 'Places exceeded' message? Reasons for this message are:
- You are trying to order more than 60 places (including free teacher places)
- Due to the number of places in other customers’ baskets, there are currently insufficient places available to fulfil this order. Try again later.
- Checkout.
- Once you have booked your place, you will see a screen indicating your order has been successful. Please make a note of your order number.
- The person making the booking and all the teachers attending will also receive an automatic acknowledgement of your booking.
- A non-refundable deposit invoice of 20% of the booking value will be emailed to you within 24 hours of booking. It must be paid by debit or credit card within 7 days of receipt. Failure to pay this invoice will result in the cancellation of the booking.
- Please do not make final travel arrangements until you have paid your deposit invoice.
Special information For Trusts
- Are you a Trust finance officer looking to book conference places for more than one of your schools?
- Please note: the limit of 60 places per organisation applies to the organisation booking the places.
- If you require more than 60 places in total, you will need to do one of the following.
Option 1 (recommended)
Finance officers or heads of English register a UK Educator Admin (purchasing) account to the school and place the order. At billing they will have the option to enter the name and email address of the finance officer at the Trust. The address on the invoice will be that of the school.
Option 2
Finance officers at the Trust head office register separate UK Educator Admin (purchasing) accounts to each school requiring places. They place each order when logged into the individual school account. A different email will be required for each registration.
Deposit
- A 20% non-refundable deposit will be applied to all places booked. If you cancel a place you will lose the 20% deposit paid. You will not be able to use the 20% deposit paid on cancelled places towards the final invoice.
- You will receive a non-refundable deposit invoice of 20% of the booking value, to be paid by credit card within 7 days of receipt. The payment can ONLY be paid via the Stripe link sent with the deposit invoice, not by making a payment directly via our website. Failure to pay this invoice will result in the cancellation of the booking.
- The balance invoice will be sent on 27th October, after the deadline for confirming final numbers. Places booked after the final numbers' date will be liable for 100% of the cost of places booked.
Cancellations and Amendments
- The 20% deposit on places booked is non-refundable. Please note: you will not be able to use the 20% deposit paid on cancelled places towards the final invoice.
- You can make amendments to your booking until the final numbers deadline – 5pm on 22nd October. You will lose the 20% deposit paid on places cancelled by this deadline.
- You will be invoiced for the balance of the total fee (80%) on confirmed places. Please note: you will not be able to use the 20% deposit paid on cancelled places towards this final invoice.
- After this date you will be charged 100% of the ticket price, regardless of the numbers of students you bring to the conference.
- Places booked after the final numbers' date will be liable for 100% of the cost of places booked.
- We will email on 20th October to remind you to confirm your final numbers.
- The balance invoice will be sent on 27th October, after the deadline for confirming final numbers. It will come from [email protected] Further correspondence related to payment will come from [email protected]
Please note: We will be unable to make refunds in the case of weather, transport difficulties or circumstances beyond our control. Should EMC need to cancel the conference, a full refund will be on offer. (However, personal arrangements including travel, accommodation or hospitality relating to the conference which have been arranged by you or your institution are at your own risk and not refundable by us.)
Waiting list
- We are no longer operating a waiting list for student conferences.
- If places become available, we will re-open the bookings on the website. We will publicise this via social media and our general mailing list.
Red weather warning
- In the event of a red weather warning, we will follow official advice about travel and cancel the event if it is deemed inadvisable to go ahead. In such circumstances, we will be unable to offer a refund.